The traditional inkjet printer usually adopts an inkjet printhead mounted on a carriage which can transversely move back and forth along a printing medium (such as a piece of paper). When the printhead transversely moves along the printing medium, the printhead is driven by a control system to eject or spray ink drops onto the printing medium, so as to form images and characters.
An ink container which can be replaced separately with the printhead is traditionally used by the printer. When the ink of an ink cartridge is out, the ink cartridge is removed and replaced by a new ink container. By adoption of the ink container, a user can independently replace the ink container and does not need to replace the printhead, and then the printhead can be used for printing until the service life of the printhead is ended.
What is favorable to the user of the printer is that: the information is stored into the ink containers, so that the quality of output images can be best and the useability of the printer can be improved. For example, the American patent U.S. Pat. No. 6,264,301 discloses an ink container provided with a storage device which is arranged on the ink container and used for storing the parameters of a printer.
The convenience of the printer is that: after the ink cartridge is installed on the printer by the user, an internal driver of the printer can automatically adjust the status of the printer for the printer to be suitable for printing. The driving conditions include the driving voltage, the pulse width, the frequency and the scheduled discharge. By adoption of the method, the printer can be at the optimum status for printing specified ink and the driving conditions do not need to be manually adjusted.
The information storage device identified by the printer is arranged on the ink container. The printer can only drive corresponding procedures after reading information from the information storage device. For the information storage device of the ink container to be in good contact with the printer, the Chinese patent CN97123110.9 discloses a technique, wherein locking members on an ink container can be engaged with locking members on a printer, so as to guarantee that an information storage device of the printer can be tightly engaged with a contact of the printer; and the locking members on the printer is made from an elastic steel sheet.
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram illustrating the state when the traditional ink cartridge is installed on a printer, wherein the ink cartridge can be inserted into an ink cartridge installation mechanism 20 of the printer; and an ink cartridge 1 is provided with a given amount of medium printing fluid such as ink.
When the ink cartridge is correctly aligned and installed into the ink cartridge installation mechanism 20, locking members 68 on the printer are engaged with corresponding locking members 64 on the ink cartridge, so as to lock the ink cartridge into the ink cartridge installation mechanism 20. The locking members 68 are made from a steel sheet, and one end of the locking members 68 is fixed on the ink cartridge installation mechanism 20 of the printer. After the ink cartridge is pulled out and inserted in for a plurality of times, an ink level detection component of the printer tends to hit the ink cartridge out of the ink cartridge installation mechanism 20.
The ink level detection of the ink container of the printer adopts the means of hitting, namely using a soft membrane and a pump. When there is ink in the ink container, a detection cavity is sealed by the internal pump; and as there is ink in the detection cavity, the hitting resistance is relatively large when the ink level detection mechanism of the printer hits and a pressure sensor may determine that there is ink in the ink cartridge. When there is no ink in the ink container, the detection cavity is sealed by the internal pump; and as there is no ink in the detection cavity, the volume of internal gas is compressed when the ink level detection mechanism of the printer hits and then the hitting resistance is relatively small, and consequently the pressure sensor may determine that there is no ink in the ink cartridge. As a hitting force of the ink level detection mechanism of the printer is between 1,000N and 1,500N and the hitting direction is consistent with the removing direction of the ink cartridge, the locking members on the printer tends to be loosened after long-term hitting of the printer, and then the problems of poor contact of a chip and abnormal disengagement of the ink container may occur.